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| DBM |
| Posted: Feb 6 2010, 03:57 PM |
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I have a PC that was custom built about 6 years ago. It still works great, it has a Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard, dual Athalon processors, and 1gb RAM. I currently have 2 DVD burners that are hooked together as a slave/master using a single 80 wire IDE straight to the motherboard in the ATA 100 suported secondary IDE port . I also have 2 HDD - my C: drive has my OS (WinXP) and all of my program files on it, and it is wired to the motherboard using a 40 wire IDE cable to the primary IDE port. My other HDD is a SATA drive that is wired to a 2 port SATA card using a 32 bit PCI socket.
One of the DVD buners needs replacing and I was considering a newer SATA DVD burner wired to the open port that I have on my SATA card. But then I started thinking about other options and which ones would be best for video capture/editing/burning.
I currently have 2 open 64 bit PCI slots, and 1 open IDE port under the primary and secondary IDE ports that is not labeled. When checking my device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, it shows a Primary IDE channel, Secondary IDE channel, and a Standard Dual channel PCI IDE controller. So I am assuming this open IDE port that is not labeled is the dual channel controller listed??
Questions for the PC guru's:
1. If I change my current C: drive IDE wire from a 40 to a 80 wire will I gain a faster data transfer rate?
2. Should I invest in a new C: drive and use the open SATA port for this drive?
3. Should I just replace the bad DVD burner with a new IDE interface and leave all else as is?
Looking for advice and suggestions on which way to go....
THX
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| fredgiblet |
| Posted: Feb 6 2010, 06:06 PM |
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"1. If I change my current C: drive IDE wire from a 40 to a 80 wire will I gain a faster data transfer rate?"
Marginally, but it's worth doing.
"2. Should I invest in a new C: drive and use the open SATA port for this drive?"
This will give you the most longevity, your next motherboard almost certainly either won't have PATA or will only one connector, however your SATA add-in card will require driver installs during Windows installation if you need to re-install (the F6 method), if you plan on cloning your existing C: drive and not re-installing then this won't come into play for you. Also you may need to tinker a bit to convince you motherboard of exactly which drive it should be booting off of.
"3. Should I just replace the bad DVD burner with a new IDE interface and leave all else as is?"
No. You said you have a free SATA port right? Use it, eventually you are likely to get a new computer and that new computer will have at most a single PATA port so you should move away from PATA as quickly as reasonable. |
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| DBM |
| Posted: Feb 6 2010, 06:24 PM |
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so if I understand you correctly.....I should:
replace the 40 wire IDE C: drive cable with a 80
replace the bad IDE dvd burner with a SATA unit and wire it to my open SATA port
right?
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| fredgiblet |
| Posted: Feb 6 2010, 07:12 PM |
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That would be MY move. |
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| DBM |
| Posted: Feb 6 2010, 08:55 PM |
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thx for the advice....
If I could get by with just the one existing IDE DVD burner that I have now (working fine), would it make more sense to add a second new SATA HDD to use as my C: (root) drve on the open SATA port? How hard would it be to copy my old C: drive to the new C: drive? |
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| fredgiblet |
| Posted: Feb 7 2010, 01:20 AM |
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"would it make more sense to add a second new SATA HDD to use as my C: (root) drve on the open SATA port?"
Maybe, the problem is that your SATA drives go through your PCI bus which limits the speed somewhat, the main advantage of getting a SATA drive is that you won't have to replace it if you upgrade your motherboard. It probably won't be significantly different performance-wise from your PATA drives. From a strict performance standpoint it's probably better to have your hard drives split between the PATA and SATA controllers, though the difference probably isn't that significant.
"How hard would it be to copy my old C: drive to the new C: drive?"
This would be easy, BUT setting your motherboard to use an add-in card for its primary boot drive might not be. |
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| Jam One |
| Posted: Feb 7 2010, 02:07 PM |
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| QUOTE (fredgiblet @ Feb 7 2010, 04:20 AM) | | ... SATA drives go through your PCI bus which limits the speed somewhat ... |
Aren't SATA & PATA both the natural-born extensions of PCI ?
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| fredgiblet |
| Posted: Feb 7 2010, 04:04 PM |
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| QUOTE (Jam One @ Feb 7 2010, 02:07 PM) | | Aren't SATA & PATA both the natural-born extensions of PCI ? |
Kinda, PATA controllers used to run off the PCI bus but back in the day, it wasn't a problem since their top speed of 133MB/s was extremely fast, these days a single drive can easily hit 100MB/s so if two drives are running at once it doesn't really work out too well. Modern motherboards run almost everything off of the PCI-e bus which is 250MB/lane with any given motherboard having something like 16-32 lanes (though 16 of them are usually dedicated to a video card slot). |
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| phaeron |
| Posted: Feb 7 2010, 10:31 PM |
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PATA was actually born as an extension of the ISA bus....
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| fredgiblet |
| Posted: Feb 8 2010, 04:27 AM |
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| QUOTE (phaeron @ Feb 7 2010, 10:31 PM) | | PATA was actually born as an extension of the ISA bus.... |
I'm just a young pup, the first computer I built for myself had ATA/66, granted it was from a RAID controller added to the motherboard but still. The good old days when all you need to look at was clock speed. |
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